


up on your feathers laughing

by hugwarts



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, M/M, Magical Realism, Tattoos, also there are dragons nbd, duH! duh it's an au!, dumb boys in luv, that's kind of the point of magical realism though. that everything is nbd.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:28:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2076756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hugwarts/pseuds/hugwarts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>louis is a charmed(/charming?) tattoo artist, harry is a moron. magical realism that probably treads a little too hard into magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	up on your feathers laughing

**Author's Note:**

> title from joni mitchell, whatever, i never said i was perfect. hmu @ femlarry dot tumblr dot com. 
> 
> also, i'm not going to Care about what order these tattoos were Gotten in. so all of harry's mentioned tattoos will, in fact, be real, but don't get too caught up in "the swallows were way after the green bay packers logo!!!!!" because a) tbh like i know this info b) there are dragons in this au, so.
> 
> future chaps will be longer but i wanted to get something up now.

Louis gets a lot of bizarre customers—he attributes it mostly to his tattoo parlor being located in the same shabby building as a sex therapist (a shoddy one at that, Louis tried his hand with Dr. Loveright and got nowhere fast, except maybe out of her office), a palm reader, and a PETSMART ripoff meant only for exotic creatures, creatively called EXOTICPETSMART, for people who own ridiculously expensive controlled creatures but can only afford dry dragon meal. 

So, as far as enchanted tattooing goes, he’s not exactly high end. He’s absolute shit at doing love tattoos, and luck tattoos, and riches tattoos. But generally, if people are going to drop a minimum of 80 pounds, they think about what they’re going to spell onto their flesh and which spells, maybe, they want to tether to themselves by blood, forever. 

Harry Styles, he thinks, doesn’t think too much about the possible repercussions of covering himself in spelled ink.

 

It hasn’t exactly been a busy day when Louis gets a walk-in, which. He can do, probably, if the guy wants to choose something out of the book, or something in Louis’ portfolio (He’s famous for his ‘no more lost socks’ enchantment). The walk-in, a lanky and somewhat ridiculous-looking man in a floppy hat and sheer button-down, smiles in a way that he probably thinks is winsome, even, but looks much like a toddler trying to figure out how to use his mouth in the way that all the adults around him use their own mouths. 

“My birds,” the man says, almost impossibly slowly, “keep getting out.” 

Louis looks at him expectantly. What he’s expecting, he’s not so sure. More, perhaps. He runs through all the businesses nearby, tries to scan his mental Google Maps to figure out where this guy might be headed that isn’t Tomlinson Tattoos. 

“Well, EXOTICPETSMART is downstairs, but they specialize more in the bigger cages. Unless your birds are the size of a toy dragon, maybe, or your flat is ludicrously large? I hear the toy ones are sometimes only half a tonne.”

A smile spreads across the man’s face, and he lifts his hat to run a hand through his hair. (It looks, maybe, a bit unwashed, but then again, Louis gave himself a tiny shampoo bottle on his inner thigh only so he wouldn’t have to ever wash his hair again, which is a fun story to explain to sexual partners who are absolutely captivated by his profound laziness.) Then, after a beat, he says, “I’d like to maybe take this in a different direction: I want you to spell me, so my birds can’t keep getting away. I’ve heard good things about you, Louis Tomlinson. ”

Louis silently pulls out his clipboard. The top sheet is a waiver. He takes a pen and circles the relevant parts, adding an x on the signature line. “Just for transparency, you do know that these tattoos require a great deal of specificity. Once we do this, your birds can’t get away, but it doesn’t go much further than that. Like, your next bird can fly free all she wants. The pigeons on the street will still shit on you, you know?”

“I understand,” he says, finishing his signature with a flourish. 

“Okay, Harry Styles,” Louis says, looking down at the completed waiver, which clearly states the customer is to be under no other temporary enchantments—there goes his theory that Harry Styles is really a toddler transmogrified into a 20-year-old man. “I just need to get a government-issued ID and scan that into my system, and we can get started on your consultation and settle a price.”

Harry hands over a driver’s license and says, “and I don’t like cages. For one, I already tried that”—he lifts up an arm and presses the gauzy fabric against his skin so Louis can see a birdcage already clearly inked on his ribs—“and it didn’t seem to work. I want to let Dusty and Darcy roam around my flat, so. I guess the cage didn’t do much to enchant the birds themselves.”

Louis internally grimaces, but says, measuredly, “Did you ever think an easier solution than enchanted tattooing might be to, you know. Not let your birds roam free?”

“Louis, you don’t strike me as the type to embrace the easiest possible solution, or the most conventional.” There’s a way that Harry has, of looking at him almost too seriously and too deeply, and Louis averts his eyes. 

“Well, Harry Styles, you just might have me pinned all wrong. I’ll have you know I love embracing the easiest possible solution. I have a remote control inked on my ankle just so I don’t ever have to replace the batteries in my remote. Wherever it is.”

Harry just laughs, too earnestly and loudly and brightly, and rips off his shirt.

 

Harry comes out an hour later and his wallet 200 pounds lighter, with two swallows inked right on his chest, and when he arrives at his flat, Dusty and Darcy are perched on his headboard, looking as contrite as birds have the ability to look—after all, their beaks are kind of counterproductive to contrition. (And, as Harry learns later, they tore up another one of his expensive scarves. Again. So maybe the contrition is just Harry projecting.)


End file.
